Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea, (born c. 495 bce—died c. 430 bce), Greek philosopher and mathematician, whom Aristotle called the inventor of dialectic. Zeno is especially known for his paradoxes that contributed to the development of logical and mathematical rigour and that were insoluble until the development of precise concepts of continuity and infinity.

Zeno was famous for the paradoxes whereby, in order to recommend the Parmenidean doctrine of the existence of “the one” (i.e., indivisible reality), he sought to controvert the commonsense belief in the existence of “the many” (i.e., distinguishable qualities and things capable of motion). Zeno was the son of a certain Teleutagoras and the pupil and friend of Parmenides. In Plato’s Parmenides, Socrates, “then very young,” converses with Parmenides and Zeno, “a man of about forty”; but it may be doubted whether such a meeting was chronologically possible. Plato’s account of Zeno’s purpose (Parmenides), however, is presumably accurate. In reply to those who thought that Parmenides’ theory of the existence of “the one” involved inconsistencies, Zeno tried to show that the assumption of the existence of a plurality of things in time and space carried with it more serious inconsistencies. In early youth he collected his arguments in a book, which, according to Plato, was put into circulation without his knowledge.

Zeno made use of three premises: first, that any unit has magnitude; second, that it is infinitely divisible; and third, that it is indivisible. Yet he incorporated arguments for each: for the first premise, he argued that that which, added to or subtracted from something else, does not increase or decrease the second unit is nothing; for the second, that a unit, being one, is homogeneous and that therefore, if divisible, it cannot be divisible at one point rather than another; for the third, that a unit, if divisible, is divisible either into extended minima, which contradicts the second premise or, because of the first premise, into nothing. He had in his hands a very powerful complex argument in the form of a dilemma, one horn of which supposed indivisibility, the other infinite divisibility, both leading to a contradiction of the original hypothesis. His method had great influence and may be summarized as follows: he continued Parmenides’ abstract, analytic manner but started from his opponents’ theses and refuted them by reductio ad absurdum. It was probably the two latter characteristics which Aristotle had in mind when he called him the inventor of dialectic.

That Zeno was arguing against actual opponents, Pythagoreans who believed in a plurality composed of numbers that were thought of as extended units, is a matter of controversy. It is not likely that any mathematical implications received attention in his lifetime. But in fact the logical problems which his paradoxes raise about a mathematical continuum are serious, fundamental, and inadequately solved by Aristotle. See alsoparadoxes of Zeno.